Increasingly, adult beverages can be just as local as the farm-to-table veggies served at some Springfield restaurants.

Since 2000, the tally of Ozarks craft breweries, wineries and distilleries located within a couple of hours drive from Springfield jumped from seven to 39.

Thirteen of those hubs for craft spirits, wine and beer have only been around since 2012.

And while wine-makers, brewers and distillers make products that vary from aged whiskey to stout beer to Norton red wine, the idea of craft, of an artisan’s love for one’s own handiwork, guides them.

On a concrete level, the notion of “craft” adult beverages can be hard to define, say practitioners in the art of brewing, distilling and wine-making.

But understand this: It’s local. It’s booze. It’s business.

“There’s difficulty with craft and trying to define craft,” said Jim Blansit, owner and master distiller of Copper Run Distillery, in Walnut Shade. Copper Run makes small-batch whiskey, moonshine and rum.

“There’s so many techniques… just take Copper Run’s history,” Blansit explained. “We’re grain-to-bottle now, but we weren’t always.”

Interactive map: Zoom in and out to see 39 Ozarks craft breweries, distilleries and wineries — all within a couple hours' drive from Springfield. Tap to learn more about each one.

If there is a consensus on what craft means, it’s this:

>Craft is little. It’s not Jack Daniel’s or Anheuser-Busch InBev. Craft can be big-little, like Mother’s Brewing Company, which is on track to sell about 4 million bottles of beer this year, all brewed in the heart of Springfield. Or craft can mean little-little, like Keltoi Winery, based in Carthage, which only sells its Norton reds or fruit wines (among several others) on site and at a nearby liquor store.

>Craft is about enthusiasm — and it’s hard work. “A lot of people in the microbrew industry started off as home brewers,” said Todd Frye. He owns The Home Brewery in Ozark, a place where hobbyists can load up on all the gear required to make beer, wine, soda, mead or cider. “They think to themselves, ‘you know what, I’m having an awesome time at this, and I’d just love to do this for a living.’”

Jerad and Angela Lachner are doing it for a living. They’re currently working on the licenses they need — federal, state and local — before launching a brewery. Their hope is to have Back Home Brewing Company open for business in spring 2016. Jerad said both he and his wife still work full time: He’s a welding floor supervisor; she’s a human-resources officer.

Together, they’re pursuing their dream, optimistic, Lachner said, because he believes Ozark is ready for a brewery in town. There’s a 20-mile distance from the future location of Back Home to the next brewery over

“It’ll take a bit of time to get into the market,” Lachner said. Still, they plan to open a tap room and brewery, and eventually place Back Home beers in bars and groceries. “Unless somebody comes up with a bunch of money,” Lachner conceded, “we’re going to move a lot slower than some of the larger breweries.”

Phil Wages has a similar story. Since he graduated high school in 1998, he’s been working for eMoviePoster.com, an online seller of vintage movie posters based in West Plains. But he’s also working toward opening Wages Brewing Company there, ideally in March. “People down here really believe in us,” he said. He’s getting the word out through an online crowdfunding effort and by pouring homebrew versions of his beer at events like the Taste of Missouri festival later this month at the town’s civic center.

It’s not easy.

“A lot of these breweries are very, very small breweries,” said Jeff Schrag, founder of Mother’s Brewing Company in Springfield, a relative growler to the other pint-sized breweries’ pints.

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John Inmon cleans a kegerator at Mother's Brewing Company, based in central Springfield.(Photo: News-Leader file photo)

“A lot are somebody who has basically bought themselves a job. They work, they may do another job, and their other business partners are still working full time.”

“The positive aspect is that those folks add excitement and innovation to our industry,” Schrag added.

>Craft is authentic. Whether creating wine, beer or spirits, these drink-makers strive for quality. For example, at Lambs and Vines Winery near Seymour, Marshall Snodgrass and his family lean toward dry-tasting wines made with grapes such as Cabernet Franc, bucking the trend toward sweeter, more popular tastes.

Among spirits-makers, Copper Run Distillery prides itself on working “grain-to-bottle.” This means that Copper Run doesn’t simply bottle or flavor beverages from another producer.

Instead, the distillery starts with raw corn, wheat or barley in small quantities, and ferments them. From there, they create unaged spirits — also known as moonshine, the strong liquor enjoyed by Ozarkers a century ago — or aged whiskey, which is flavored by a year or more spent in heavily charred barrels of Missouri white oak.

But authenticity has many facets, Blansit said.

“We don’t grow the grain,” he explained. ”Where do you find the distinction between what is craft, and what is not craft?”

“Let’s say you’re buying whiskey from a producer, and you’re doing all the aging. There’s an art to aging. You’re expressing your craft in different aging techniques.”

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Fran Overboe, part owner of OOVVDA Winery, pours a sample of wine at a local food festival. Springfield-based OOVVDA makes fruit wines and wines from local grapes.(Photo: News-Leader file photo)

>Perhaps above all, craft is about the love of the taste. For example, Blansit said his customer base at Copper Run ranges in age from 30 to 60. “They aren’t doing shots and binge-drinking,” he said. “They’re sipping, they’re savoring and they’re after the quality, the sensory experience.”

He said locals and Branson-area tourists alike are developing their tastes, too. Copper Run’s best seller used to be unaged moonshine, but in the past year, the more subtly flavored year-aged whiskey took the top slot.

>Next up: Even more craft. In the realm of craft beer, Schrag expects the addition of new breweries to continue. At industry conferences he’s heard experts predict the United States is on track to have 4,000 breweries by the end of 2015, close to the all-time peak brewery count of about 4,100. That happened between 1870 and 1880, when the population of the United States was about 50 million. It’s 320 million today.

Andrew Pennington, wine-maker at Keltoi Winery, near Carthage, said he expects “explosive” growth in the Missouri wine industry over the next 20 years.

Currently, Missouri wines only make up about 5 percent of the total wine consumption in-state, Pennington said. But that could change.

“I really feel the millennials are actually driving it, and not just them,” he said. “We could easily grab another 10 to 15 percent of the Missouri wine market and not even saturate it.”

At The Home Brewery, Frye said he thinks there is a saturation point somewhere for these interrelated movements, but he’s not sure anyone could tell where it is.

Schrag had a similar take: “There’s two hot questions that are asked in craft beer,” he said. “One is, what’s the next IPA,” i.e., the tart, bracing India pale ale that’s been trendy in the past few years.

“The other is, when’s the bubble going to bust.”

He doesn’t think the bubble is about to bust, and he thinks people still clamor for IPA beers, with their intense flavor of hops, the conelike flowers that add bitter aromas to beer.

“We don’t see the hop trend cooling in the foreseeable future,” Schrag said.

Jhett Collins, Todd Rock and Andrew Steiger are the owners of Leaky Roof Meadery in Buffalo. Some experts say mead is the next trending craft drink.(Photo: Submitted photo)

That’s not the only trend.

“I think craft distilling is the hottest thing right now,” Frye said, “but I’m not sure how long it will be super-hot.”

His prediction? The next craft drinks will be cider, along with mead — a fermented honey and water drink that’s one of the oldest alcoholic beverages made by human beings. In this corner of the world, Leaky Roof Meadery and 7C’s Winery make it, and Horst Vineyards is working on adding mead to its lineup.

Where is craft mead headed? Dwight Crevelt, owner of 7C’s Winery, has developed meads flavored with jalapeño, habanero and ghost peppers.

And, he said, his customers are keen to try them out.

So long as Ozarkers are willing to taste the latest concoctions, a host of brewers, wine-makers and distillers will be eager to pour out new flavors.